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Preventing Human Error

18 April, 2020 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The oscar that became a case study in preventing human errors

A Problem with the envelope On February 26th 2017, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its 89th award ceremony, celebrating the best films of 2016. The ceremony was a case study in preventing human error (or not depending on your perspective). It went swimmingly until the very last award for best picture. Faye Dunaway […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accident prevention, accountability, blame, clarity, data presentation, error proofing, risk assessment, simplicity

Hold Their Feet to the Fire

17 August, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Accountability We spend a lot of time talking about accountability and responsibility. If you google “Accountability versus Responsibility” you will get at least 51 million hits.  Most of them tell you that you can’t manage people if you aren’t clear about accountabilities and responsibilities. (Please don’t ask if I have looked at all 51 million, […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: accountability, beliefs, blame, fear and anxiety, roles and responsibilities

How to Get Better at Anything — Almost

14 January, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Performance Improvement

How to lose weight There is a tried and tested way to lose weight…. Commit to losing weight. Measure progress — stones or kilos, whichever works. Find the most important input, the one with most leverage, (calories) and measure that as well. Try things that will have a positive impact on the important input. Use […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: accountability, best practice, continuous improvement

Myopic Management

8 January, 2018 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Myopic Management

The quick fix Managers are problem solvers. We spend our days finding issues and fixing them: We solve the problem of low sales by offering discounts. We solve the problem of high costs by cutting budgets. We solve the problem of poor quality by extra inspection. Our time is filled with discrete problem after discrete […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accountability, blame, collaboration, command and control, objective setting, point optimisation, roles and responsibilities

The Two Faces of Accountability

1 January, 2018 by James Lawther 7 Comments

Accountability When things go wrong there is a simple solution. Politicians do it, journalists do it, managers do it and even my children do it.   When things go wrong we search for somebody to blame “hold accountable”.  It’s in our nature. Fortunately it is more nuanced than that. There are two ways we can […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: accountability, blame, learning, management style, reinforcing behaviour, root cause analysis

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